Breathing Lessons (1989 Pulitzer Prize) Read online

  "I had the weirdest dream," she said after a moment.

  "Was I in it?" Leroy wanted to know.

  "Not that I can remember. But you might have been." "Last week my friend Valerie dreamed I had died," Leroy said.

  "Ooh, don't even say such a thing!" "She dreamed I got run over by a tractor trailer," Leroy said with satisfaction.

  Maggie swiveled to catch Fiona's eye. She wanted to assure her that such a dream meant nothing, or maybe she wanted the assurance for herself. But Fiona wasn't listening. She was gazing at the clutter of convenience stores and pizza parlors.

  "Mighty Value Supermarket," Ira said. He flicked his left turn signal on.

  Maggie said, "Mighty what? I never heard of it." "It's handy, is what counts," Ira told her. He was delayed by a stream of oncoming traffic, but finally he found an opening and darted across the street and into a lot littered with abandoned shopping carts. He parked beside a panel truck and switched off the engine.

  Leroy said she wanted to come too. Maggie said, "Well, of course," and then Ira, who had just started to slouch down behind the wheel, straightened and opened his door as if he'd been planning to go with them all along. This made Maggie smile. (Don't try and tell her he didn't care about his grandchild!) Fiona said, "Well, I certainly don't want to sit here by myself," and she stepped out of the car to follow them. She had never been fond of grocery shopping, as Maggie recalled.

  The Mighty Value turned out to be one of those vast, cold, white, shiny places with rank upon rank of checkout counters, most of them closed. Some syrupy love song was playing over the loudspeaker. Against her will, Mag- gie slowed down, keeping time with the music. She drifted past the fruits and vegetables, dreamily swinging her pocketbook, while the others went ahead. Leroy took a run with an empty cart and then hopped on the back and coasted until she caught up with Ira, who had already reached the poultry counter. He turned and smiled at her. From Maggie's angle his profile looked sharp and wolfish-hungry, really. It was something about the way he jutted his face toward Leroy. Maggie bypassed Fiona and arrived next to him. She slipped her arm through his and lightly brushed her cheek against his shoulder.

  "Dark meat or white?" Ira was asking Leroy.

  "Dark," Leroy said promptly. "Me and Ma like drumsticks." "Us too," Ira told her, and he picked out a pack and dropped it into her cart.

  "And sometimes me and Ma eat thighs, but we don't think wings are worth the bother," Leroy said.

  "Me and Ma" this, "me and Ma" that-how long had it been since Maggie herself was so central to anyone's world? And this "Ma" was only Fiona, fragile-boned Fiona sashaying up the aisle in her cutoff shorts.

  Humming along with the loudspeaker music, Ira placed a pack of thighs on top of the drumsticks in the cart. "Now for the ice cream," he said. Leroy coasted away on the cart and Maggie and Ira followed. Maggie still had her arm linked through Ira's. Fiona trailed behind.

  In the freezer section they had no trouble deciding on fudge ripple, but then there were so many different fudge ripples to choose from: Mighty Value's house brand and the standard brands and then the fancy, foreign-sounding brands that Ira called "designer desserts." He was opposed to designer desserts on principle; he wanted to get the Mighty Value. Fiona, who had discovered the Hair Care section, offered no opinion, but Leroy said that she and Ma had always favored Breyer's. And Maggie voted to go all out and choose something foreign. They could have discussed it forever, except that by now the loudspeaker was playing "Tonight You Belong to Me," and halfway through the song Ira began muttering along with it. " 'Way down,' " he rumbled absently, " 'by the stream . . .' "So then Maggie couldn't resist chiming in on that airy little soprano part: " 'How sweet, it will seem It started as a spoof, but it developed into a real production. " 'Once more, just to dream, in the moonlight!' " Their voices braided together on the chorus and then sailed apart, only to reunite and twine around each other once again. Fiona forgot the box of hair dye she was studying; Leroy clasped her hands admiringly under her chin; an old woman paused in the aisle to smile at them. It was the old woman who brought Maggie back to earth. All at once she imagined some deception in this scene, some lie that she and Ira were collaborating in with their compliant harmonizing and the romantic gaze they trained upon each other. She broke off in the middle of a solo line. "Patience and Prudence," she informed Leroy briskly. "Nineteen fifty-seven." "Fifty-six," Ira said.

  Maggie said, "Whatever." They turned their attention back to the ice cream.

  In the end they decided on Breyer's, with chocolate sauce from the shelf above the freezer. "Hershey's chocolate sauce, or Nestle's?" Ira asked.

  "I'll leave it up to you two." "Or here's a Mighty Value brand. What do you say we go for that?" "Just not Brown Cow," Leroy told him. "I can't abide Brown Cow." "Definitely not Brown Cow," Ira said.

  "Brown Cow smells like candle wax," Leroy told Maggie.

  Maggie said, "Ah." She looked down at Leroy's pointy little face and smiled.

  Fiona asked Maggie, "Have you ever considered using a mousse?" "A what?" "A styling mousse. On your hair." "Oh, on my hair," Maggie said. She had thought they were talking about some kind of ice-cream sauce. "Why, no, I don't believe I have." "A lot of our beauticians recommend it." Was Fiona recommending it to Maggie? Or maybe she was only speaking generally. "Just what would it do for a person?" Maggie asked.

  "Well, in your case it would give your hair a little, I don't know, a little shape or something. It would kind of organize it." "I'll buy some," Maggie decided.

  She picked up a silvery container, along with a bottle of Affinity shampoo since she still had that coupon. (Brings back that fullness that time has taken away, a display card promised.) Then they all went to the express lane, rushed along by Maggie because it was after six, according to her watch, and she had told Jesse six-thirty. Ira said, "Do you have enough money? I could go get the car while you're paying." She nodded, and he left them. Leroy laid their purchases neatly on the counter. The customer in front of them was buying nothing but breads. Rye bread, white bread, biscuits, whole wheat rolls. Maybe he was trying to fatten up his wife. Say he was the jealous type, and his wife was very thin and beautiful. The customer departed, taking his breads with him. Leroy said, "Double bags, please," in a bossy, experienced voice. The boy at the cash register grunted without looking. He was muscular and good-looking, deeply tanned, and he wore a gold razor blade on a chain inside the open collar of his shirt.

  What on earth could that mean? He rang up their items swiftly, his fingers stabbing the keys. Last came the shampoo. Maggie dug through her purse for the coupon and handed it to him. "Here," she said, "this is for you." He took it and turned it over. He read it narrowly, not quite moving his lips. Then he gave it back to her. He said, "Well, uh, thanks," and then, "That'll be sixteen forty-three." Maggie felt confused, but she counted out the money and picked up the bag. As they left the register she asked Fiona, "Does Mighty Value not accept coupons, or what?" "Coupons? I wouldn't know," Fiona said.

  "Maybe it's expired," Maggie said. She shifted her grocery bag in order to peer at the expiration date. But the print was covered over at right angles by Durwood Clegg's heavy blue script: Hold me close, hold me tight, make me thrill with delight . . .

  Maggie's face grew hot. She said, "Well! Of all the conceit!" "Pardon?" Fiona asked, but Maggie didn't answer. She screwed up the coupon and dropped it into the grocery bag.

  Outside, it was much darker now. The air was a deep, transparent blue and insects were flitting around the lights high above the parking lot. Ira leaned against the car by the curb. "You want to put the groceries in the trunk?" he asked Maggie, but she said, "No, I'll just hold them." She suddenly felt old and weary. It seemed they would never reach home. She got into the car and sat down hard, with the grocery bag slumped any which way on her knees.

  St. Michael the Archangel. Charlie's Fine Liquors. Used-car dealers, one after the other. Gatch Memorial Church. Dead Man's Fingers Crab House. HA
PPY HOUR NITELY, with red and blue neon bubbles fizzing above a neon cocktail glass. Cemeteries and shabby frame houses and fast-food restaurants and empty playgrounds. They took a right off Belair Road-finally, finally leaving Route One-and headed down their own street. The frame houses grew more numerous. Their windows were squares of yellow light, some gauzy with curtains and some fully exposed, revealing ornate decorative lamps or china figurines meticulously centered on the sills. For no good reason, Maggie was reminded of rides she had taken with Ira during their courtship, driving past houses where every other couple in the world, it seemed, had a space to be alone in. What she would have given, back then, for even the smallest of those houses, even just four walls and a bed! She felt a sweet, sad fullness in her chest now, remembering that long-ago ache.

  They passed the Seeing Eye Palmistry Parlor, really just a private home with a sign propped in the living room window. A girl was sitting out on the steps, maybe waiting her turn; she had a small, heart-shaped face and she was dressed all in black except for her purple suede shoes, which showed up clearly in the light from the porch. A man trudged down the sidewalk with a little girl riding his shoulders and clutching two handfuls of his hair. It seemed the scenery had grown more intimate, more specific. Maggie turned toward Leroy and said, "I don't suppose any of this is familiar." "Oh, I've seen it," Leroy said.

  "You have?" "Only in passing," Fiona corrected her quickly.

  "When was that?" Leroy looked at Fiona, who said, "We might have driven by here once or twice." Maggie said, "Is that so." In front of their own house, Ira parked. It was one of those bouses that appear to be mostly front porch, at least from the street-squat and low-browed, not at all impres- sive, as Maggie was the first to admit. She wished at least the lights were on. That would have made it seem more welcoming. But every window was dark. "Well!" she said, too heartily. She opened her door and got out of the car, clutching the groceries. "Come on in, everyone!" There was something befuddled about the way they milled around on the sidewalk. They had been traveling for too long. When Ira started up the steps, he accidentally banged Fiona's suitcase against the railing, and he fumbled awhile with the key before he got the door unlocked.

  They entered the musty, close darkness of the front hallway. Ira flipped on the light. Maggie called, "Daisy?" without a hope that Daisy would answer. Clearly the house was deserted. She shifted the grocery bag to her left hip and picked up the notepad that lay on top of the bookcase. Gone to say goodbye to Lavinia, .Daisy's precise italics read. "She's at Mrs. Perfect's," Maggie told Ira. "Well, she'll be back! How long can it take to say goodbye? She'll be back in no time!" This was all for Leroy's benefit, to show that Daisy really existed-that there was more to this house than old people.

  Leroy was circling the hallway, with her baseball glove tucked under one arm. She was squinting up at the photographs that covered the walls. "Who's that?" she asked, pointing to one.

  Ira as a young father stood in dappled sunlight, awkwardly holding a baby. "That's your grandpa, holding your daddy," Maggie told her.

  Leroy said, "Oh," and moved on at once. Probably she had hoped it was Jesse holding Leroy. Maggie cast her eyes around the room to see if she could locate such a picture. You could hardly make out the wallpaper pattern for all the photos that hung here, each framed professionally by Ira and each mat and molding different, like a sample of something. There was Jesse as a toddler, as a little boy on a scooter, as a thumbtack-sized face among rows of other faces in fifth grade. But no picture of Jesse as a grownup, Maggie realized; not even as a teenager. And certainly not as a father. They had run out of wall space by then. Besides, Maggie's mother was always saying how trashy it was to display one's family photographs anywhere but a bedroom.

  Fiona was pushing her suitcase toward the stairs, leaving two long thin scratches on the floorboards behind her. "Oh, don't bother with that," Maggie told her. "Ira will carry it up for you later." How must Fiona feel, returning after so long-walking across the porch where she'd decided to keep her baby, passing through the front door that she had so often slammed out of in a huff? She looked drawn and dispirited. The sudden light had crumpled the skin around her eyes. She abandoned her suitcase and pointed to a photo high on the wall. "There /happen to be," she told Leroy. "In case you're interested." She meant her bridal photo. Maggie had forgotten that. A wedding present from Crystal, who had brought a camera to the ceremony, it showed a coltish young girl in a wrinkled dress. The frame was a black plastic diploma frame that must have come from Woolworth's. Leroy studied the photo without expression. Then she moved into the living room, where Ira was switching on lamps.

  Maggie took the groceries out to the kitchen, with Fiona close behind. "So where is he?" Fiona asked in a low voice.

  "Well, he's probably ..." Maggie said. She flicked on the overhead light and glanced at the clock. "I told him we'd eat at six-thirty and it's barely that now and you know how he loses track of time, so don't worry-" Fiona said, "I'm not worried! Who says I'm worried? I don't care if he comes or he doesn't." "No, of course not," Maggie said soothingly.

  "I just brought Leroy to visit you two. I don't care if he comes." "Well, of course you don't." Fiona sat down heavily in a kitchen chair and threw her purse on the table. Like the most formal of guests, she was carrying that purse with her from room to room; some things never changed. Maggie sighed and began unpacking the groceries. She put the ice cream in the freezer, and then she slit open both packs of chicken and dumped them into a bowl. "What kind of vegetables does Leroy like?" she asked.

  Fiona said, "Hmm? Vegetables?" She didn't seem to have her mind on the question. She was gazing at the wall calendar, which still showed the month of August. Oh, this wasn't a very organized house, not that Fiona had any right to complain. The counters seemed to collect stray objects on their own. The cupboards were filled with dusty spice bottles and cereal boxes and mismatched dishes. Drawers sagged open, exposing a jumble of belongings. One drawer caught Maggie's eye, and she went over to riffle through the layers of papers stuffed inside. "Now, somewhere here," she said, "I could almost swear . . ." She came across a PTA announcement. A torn-out recipe for something called Amazin' Raisin Pie. A packet of get-well cards that she'd been hunting since the day she bought them. And then, "Aha," she said, holding up a flier.

  "What is it?" "Picture of Jesse as a grownup. For Leroy." She brought it over to Fiona: a darkly photocopied photo of the band. Lorimer was sitting in front with his drums and Jesse stood behind, his arms draped loosely around the necks of the other two, Dave and what's-his-name. All wore black. Jesse had his eyebrows knitted in a deliberate scowl. SPIN THE CAT was printed in furry, tiger-striped letters beneath their picture, and a blank space at the bottom allowed for a specific time and place to be written in by hand.

  "Of course it doesn't do him justice," Maggie said. "These rock groups always try to look so, I don't know, so surly; have you noticed? Maybe I should just show her the snapshot I carry in my wallet. He isn't smiling there, either, but at least he's not frowning." Fiona took the flier to study it more closely. "How funny," she said. "Everyone's just the same." "Same?" "I mean they were always going to be going somewhere; didn't you always think so? They had such high-and-mighty plans. And they used to keep changing so, changing their views of music. Why, one time Leroy asked me just what kind of songs her daddy played, new wave or punk or heavy metal or what, exactly-I think she wanted to impress her friends-and I said, 'Lordy, by now it could be anything; I wouldn't have the foggiest notion.' But just look at them." "Well? So?" Maggie said. "What's to look at?" "Lorimer's still got his hair fixed in that silly shag haircut with the tail down the back of his neck that I was always dying to chop off," Fiona said. "They're still wearing the same style of clothes, even. Same old-fashioned Hell's Angels style of clothing." "Old-fashioned?" Maggie asked.

  "You could picture how they'll get to be forty and still playing together on weekends when their wives will let them, playing for Rotary Club get-
togethers and such." It bothered Maggie to hear this, but she didn't let on. She turned back to her bowl of chicken.

  Fiona said, "Who was it he brought to dinner?" "Pardon?" "You said he brought this woman to dinner one time." Maggie glanced over at her. Fiona was still holding the photo, gazing at it with a bemused expression. "Nobody important," Maggie said.

  "Well, who?" "Just some woman he'd met someplace; we've been through a lot of those. Nobody long-term." Fiona set the photo down on the table, but she went on looking at it.

  Out in the living room, ragged music started thrumming forth from the hi-fi. Evidently Leroy had found one of Jesse's castoffs. Maggie heard Hey hey and Every day and a familiar twanging of strings, although she couldn't say who was playing. She took a carton of buttermilk from the refrigerator and poured it over the chicken. A headache was tightening the skin of her forehead. Now that she thought of it, she realized it had been nagging at her for some time.

  "I'm going to call Jesse," she told Fiona suddenly.

  She went over to the wall telephone and lifted the receiver. There wasn't any dial tone. Instead she heard a ringing at the other end. "Ira must be using the extension," she said, and she hung up again. "Well, so anyhow. Vegetables. Which vegetables will Leroy eat?" "She likes tossed salad," Fiona said.

  "Oh, dear, I should've bought lettuce." "Maggie," Ira said, entering the kitchen, "what did you do to my answering machine?" "Me? I didn't do anything." "You most certainly did." "I did not! I already told you about that little mishap last evening, but then I put a new message on." He crooked his finger, beckoning her to the telephone. "Try it," he told her.